Trouble With The Church X

"Oh, what's this?"

"Didn't I tell you to shut up?"

"Yes, you did. But you see, I found something that just might be what we're all looking so desperately for." Falte smugly juggled a small crystal between his hands.

"Wait, you did!?" Ammine stood up and snatched the crystal from the air as it was flying to his left hand. She held it up to the sunlight and saw that it was transparent and had a tint of blue. She held it further up until it blended in with the sky.

"Please tell me that is what we're looking for."

"It might be." The crystal was not giving off any magic but it was probably what Kies wanted.

"You're telling me that thing can somehow increase his strength by threefolds? I find that hard to believe." The crystal was barely any bigger than his pinky finger but it apparently contained enough magic power to do that.

"We need to deliver this fast."

Ammine turned and shouted at Messa and Jasyeu to stop searching and that they found what they were looking for. The demons then headed back to where their base is only to find out that they've been blocked out.

"Ow!" Falte slammed face-first into the barrier and rubbed his nose which was now bleeding from the impact. The other three stopped behind him before they could run into the invisible barrier as well.

Ammine slowly walked to where the barrier was with one of her hands outstretched until he felt it. As her finger touched it, she felt a jolt of pain go up to her arm. "Tch. Stand back." Ammine clenched her fist and called upon her magic to assist her. Purple fire surrounded her fists, glowing almost as brightly as the light that blocked their way. She then punched the barrier as hard as she could and it flickered for a split second but did not break.

Ammine punched it a second time, then a third, then a fourth, but before she could continue mindlessly slugging the barrier, Falte stopped her.

"You're not going to break that thing," he told her. Brute force wasn't going to get them through. The barrier looked like it covered a huge area of the slums and that meant that it was probably created by the combined effort of several mages. Even if they worked together, he wasn't sure if they would be able to break it. "We need to think of something else."

"Easy for you to say. You're not the one stuck in there fighting." Ammine ignored what Falte said and went back to punching the barrier. Falte sighed and shook his head but didn't try to stop her again.

"Idiot..." he mumbled to himself. While Ammine was doing that, Falte looked around and tried to see if there was some other way they could get in. "Messa, can you sense if there is a weak point in the barrier?" Most barriers had a weak point since magic was wild and chaotic and was never evenly distributed. If they could find a part of the barrier where the magic was thinner, they might be able to break through it.

Messa closed her eyes and felt the barrier out with her own magic. After a minute, she opened her eyes again and said, "There's one on the opposite side of where we currently are."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Ugh." Looks like that idea was out of the book. By the time they reached the other side, the battle may very well already be over. Falte scratched his head and tried to think of something else.

"I-"

"Not now, I'm trying to think."

"No, it's-"

"Give me a minute please."

Messa was trying to tell Falte something but he didn't want to listen. He was too lost in his own train of thoughts. She glared unhappily at the demon for interrupting her twice.

"D*mn it, I got nothing," he shouted frustratedly after not coming up with anything despite all his thinking.

"The barrier doesn't go through the ground..."

"What!?"

"We can go under it."

"Really? Why didn't you say so earlier?"

"..."

Ammine heard what Messa said and translated it to Jasyeu who immediately began digging a hole under the barrier. It didn't take long for her to finish as there was no wall in the way and everyone jumped down and went under the barrier.

Jasyeu asked Ammine if she should fill up the hole like she had done before with the hole into Silverfield and Ammine told her no. There was no point filling the hole and they were also in a hurry.

Kies said that he would be able to hold the church back until they got him the fragment, but it didn't look that way. There were definitely too many for him to handle. They needed to find him before it was too late.

***

The priests formed some kind of prison made out of light around Kies that was slowly closing in on him. Kies tried destroying it with his Wind Cannon but had no luck. The spell was being maintained by several of the mages and unlike the previous fight against the assassins, the church had more mages. This alone made the fight significantly harder. There was a difference between fighting against two mages and an entire group of them.

The prison had now thinned to the point where there was barely any space left for him to move around him. Kies had very little time left. He thought about using Wind Cannon again to try to break through the light but he doubted that it would work. What about Wind Lance? He never used that spell other than the time he was testing it out. It should have a lot of piercing power. He relied on that and Wind Jet too much that he didn't consider how his other spells would help him. He needed to start using other spells.

"Winds, heed my call and serve my will. Take form and pierce my foe." The winds wrapped around his arm and took the form of a lance. He then thrust it as hard as he could into the barrier and drilled a hole through it, causing the entire thing to break apart.

It worked! Kies was out. Before the enemy had a chance to take in what had happened, Kies sent a wave of Wind Blades onto the mages. Five of them went down and Kies sprinted towards another group and did the same. But by then, the priests had already recovered from the surprise and blocked his attacks with their magic.

They then returned fire and bombarded Kies with an assortment of light attacks. Unable to dodge all of them when it was coming at him at the same time, Kies ended up getting hit by the majority of them and it burned his cloak. Kies took it off and tossed it away as it was nothing more than a tattered rag at this point.

Kies still had a lot of magic left but it wasn't going to last long when facing so many opponents at once.

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